TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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JUDY (2019)
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A GATHERING OF EAGLES (1963)
Next: THE TIME MACHINE (1960) two with Rod Taylor
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1
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I SAW WHAT YOU DID (1965)
Next: Susan Hayward, Fredric March & Robert Benchley
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1
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THE HUGGETTS ABROAD (1949)
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Xavier, Michael
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THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII (1933)
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1
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Williams, Cindy
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Today's neglected film is from 1943. It has aired 23 times on TCM.
THE GHOST SHIP is the captain’s ship. And the captain, as played by Richard Dix, is the only authority. Nobody is allowed to question his decisions– none of the ship’s crew, including the officers.
When a crew member (Lawrence Tierney in an early role) complains to the captain one day on their way to the port of San Sebastian, he has made a grave mistake. For this insubordination will cost him his life. In a chilling scene, Dix locks a door so that Tierney cannot get out of a cargo room where a large metal chain and hook are stored on top of him.
The vessel’s third officer (Russell Wade) suspects what the captain has done and it gnaws away at him. This is his first voyage with Dix, and initially they had gotten along well. Dix saw traits in Wade that reminded him of his younger self, and he was eager to mentor the chap.
But their cordial exchanges soon give way to hostility, when Dix feels Wade is undermining his authority after Tierney’s “accidental” death. An added complication occurs when one of the other crew is stricken with appendicitis. Dix as captain is the one who has been authorized to perform the appendectomy.
But when Dix is unable to make an incision, Wade takes over which further humiliates him. Dix, of course, provides an excuse for why he allowed Wade to handle the emergency operation. Wade seems to buy it for now, but he starts to wonder if Dix is even capable of running things. Plus he is still in doubt over Dix’s role in Tierney’s demise.
This leads to Wade making official complaints when they arrive in San Sebastian a short time later. A hearing is held, where most of the men testify. But most of them are either in awe of Dix or in fear of him, and do not go against their captain. Any suggestion of impropriety or wrongdoing is dismissed; Dix is able to resume control of the ship when they leave port, but Wade will not be working for him any longer.
There’s an interesting scene where Wade runs into a middle-aged woman (Edith Barrett) who considers herself an authority on Dix. She intends to marry Dix. After she meets up with Dix at the port, they confer about the future. He tells her that he thinks he’s not in full control of his mental faculties, which he would certainly not admit to anyone else. She agrees to wait for his hand in marriage, giving him time to pull himself together.
Ironically, Wade winds up back on the ship, this time as a passenger. He quickly realizes that Dix consented to giving him passage to the next port, with the aim of killing him…you know, to teach him who’s in control.
Dix is a certifiable lunatic in this story, not unlike Ahab in Moby Dick. He plays this role with a great deal of flair, but wisely refrains from over-the-top theatricality. Except when he’s instructed by the scriptwriter and director to take the character to the brink of (in)sanity.
As a Val Lewton production, THE GHOST SHIP contains the requisite amount of horror and suspense that we come to expect with his output. There are plenty of shadowy compositions to sustain interest and hide the cheapness of the primary set, which was a reused structure from a previous RKO film.
The characters are dealing with an enforced definition of authority and how they are all trying to gain control over their own lives and happiness. Thought-provoking questions are posed. For instance, does a man’s boss have the most authority over him? Does a woman have the right to control his destiny? How long does the man continue this way, before he must take ownership of his own life…or else it becomes a doomed journey?
This isn’t a story about making choices as much as it’s a story about the way in which power is used and abused. In that regard, it’s exemplary cinema.
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Great examples yesterday.
two thousand five hundred eighty-second categoryHigh and low
HIGH FLYERS (1937)
SWING HIGH SWING LOW (1937)
SWEET AND LOW-DOWN (1944)-
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Essential: I MARRIED A WITCH (1942)
TopBilled:
The first time I came across this film, I was struck by two things. First, the title– it’s sensational, the way precode titles often are. Only if it had been made ten years earlier, before the enforcement of the production code, it would likely have been called I MARRIED A VAMP. Much of the wife’s shenanigans would have been sexually tinged with supernatural elements involved.
But because the film was made in the early 40’s when a wife’s feminine powers had to be downplayed to subordinate her to the husband’s power, she could be too out of the ordinary. She could not be very enchanting. If she was, then she would be an adulterer who must pay the price of her sins like all femme fatales ultimately do.
In this case the wife’s powers are not entirely suppressed. But the exercising of her power is told in an almost jokey way. We are encouraged to laugh at her, at how much chaos she causes before the hubby gains control over her. Veronica Lake’s title character is not actually supposed to be taken seriously here, though I do think Miss Lake herself took the character quite seriously.
Fredric March as the leading man is an interesting choice, though I felt he was miscast. He’s almost too straitlaced, too dry and seldom cracks a smile. While he had made a screwball comedy with Carole Lombard several years before this, I don’t think farce is his strong suit. I would’ve cast Miss Lake’s costar from SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS, Joel McCrea…a handsome guy who’s believable in romcoms.
The rest of the cast is certainly distinguished. Susan Hayward, like Mr. March, doesn’t fare well in comedic vehicles. Robert Benchley is fine, and so is Elizabeth Patterson. Cecil Kellaway, as a mischievous relative of Lake’s, probably comes off best. He knows how to capture the impish aspects of the role. It’s easy to see why he’d earn an Oscar nomination a few years later as a leprechaun in Fox’s THE LUCK OF THE IRISH.
Okay, let’s get to the second thing that struck me when I first came across this film. And this impression still remains with me. The well-known sitcom Bewitched seems to steal its main idea, about a calamitous marriage between a dark-haired mortal and a blonde witch, from this picture without giving credit where it’s due. Credit of course goes to humorist Thorne Smith, since this concept was his brainchild.
Check out some of Mr. Smith’s other out-of-this-world comedies. Especially TOPPER and TURNABOUT. You don’t have to be married to someone with a broomstick to appreciate them.
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Jlewis:
Got this one on DVD roughly a decade ago since I rather enjoyed a few other comedies I’ve seen directed by René Clair, À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ being a personal favorite, and also because it is an entertaining precursor to a favorite sixties TV sitcom of mine that we’ve also reviewed here, Bewitched. With that said, I would not say it has become a particular favorite of mine, being more charming and magical than out and out hilarious as a supernatural comedy.
I’ve only watched it twice before reviewing here. I seriously doubt modern viewers post-Harry Potter will find much novelty in it since the then-innovative special effects would hardly wow today and the story is pretty basic.
For the seasoned movie buff, there is the added novelty of it being a full fledged Paramount production that wound up as a rival United Artist release, a “mongrel” product of the Hollywood studio system when you could easily distinguish titles apart by their “in-house” style. Production credit is listed as “Cinema Guild,” since UA was suffering a wartime limit of new product to put out and the mountain-of-stars had some surplus to farm out. Thus, we see quite a few Paramount contract players here, including several we have seen in recent Essentials like AND NOW TOMORROW and PRACTICALLY YOURS.
Robert Pirosh and Marc Connelly adapted the screenplay from Thorne Smith’s then recent novel The Passionate Witch with a rather complicated backstory set-up that ultimately leads to your otherwise simple and standard plot of boy meets girl and almost loses her before happily ever after marriage and creating the next Nuclear Family. Key difference here: he is “mortal” and she is a supernatural spirit who has been around for a few centuries… much like Bewitched the TV show but not like the film noir we will be covering soon that sports the same title.
Frederic March plays both a Puritan prosecutor of witches in 17th century Old Salem, Jonathan Wooley, and his multi-great decedent who is cursed by the supernatural community for ancestral sins. He is currently a prominent politician running for governor, Wallace Wooley, and the curse is an expected unhappy marriage repeated through the generations (cue our cute little montage showing various Wooley men each century “suffering” from Alpha She-males) with pretty-but-grumpy Estelle Masterson (Susan Hayward).
Veronica Lake is Jennifer, a blond bombshell witch, and more British than American accented Cecil Kellaway is her eccentric father warlock in a relationship resembling that of Elizabeth Montgomery’s Samantha dealing with daddy Maurice Evans on the later TV series. Both get trapped in a tree that stands over their 17th century ashes and lightning strikes in 1942 to free their spirits out to take on human form in the modern world and create mischief among the modern day Wooley mortals.
Actress Lake is quite the Playboy sex kitten here, cooing away in a sultry way, as she first introduces herself to Wallace in a fire rescue scene at the (what else?) Puritan Hotel, wearing no clothes at first but hastily covered-up so that it is all prim and proper as the Production Code likes it.
A love potion is intended to seduce Wallace into falling for her instead of his intended bride but our heroine accidentally drinks it herself and goes gaga over Wallace herself. Nonetheless her plan to foil his marriage works and he does not need any potions in order to succumb to her charms. It is soon “who is Estelle?” Poor Susan Hayward’s character is dropped from the story-line rather quickly here.
Despite all of the fun and irresistible special effects that include a flying car at one point that soars by the city town-hall clock, the 77 minute running time is mostly focused, again, on your somewhat predictable romantic fluff with the governor “magically” winning his election and marrying the “O.K….so she is a witch!” in the end. Again, our final scenes involve the couple producing a trio of adorable kiddies but with one resembling mommy more than she anticipates, riding a broom (a little like Tabitha in Bewitched the series).
Edgar Kennedy is fortunately given far more to do here as Wallace’s best chum Doctor Dudley than he was in another Paramount offering that we recently covered, PRACTICALLY YOURS which, intriguingly enough, also showcases Kellaway in the cast as well. (It is wonderful how all of our recent movies these two months are interconnected in this way.) Additional comic support includes Elizabeth Patterson the beleaguered housekeeper and Robert Warwick as both financial backer to Wallace’s election and daddy to the jilted bride Estelle.
So many consider this a classic film from a master French filmmaker and, yes, I do consider it…impressive. Not so much funny as it should be but, then again, my sense of humor has gotten mutated in recent years and maybe I was expecting more from it when I first viewed it. It was nonetheless ahead of its time in novelty value even if the razzle-dazzle on display would look quaint by the sixties with the small screen shows of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and even The Twilight Zone out-doing it all.
What works so well are the performances. March is the delightful straight man to energetic Lake, who is much more enjoyable here than in the even more critically beloved SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS. She succeeds in getting disruptive Daddy stuck in a bottle of old whiskey kept under high security in the Happy Home of the Wooleys… but he is also chuckling as he observes the antics of his multi-great grand-daughter plotting to repeat the supernatural cycles of mischief in the future. This is a delightful ending that makes me enjoy it overall despite its short-comings.
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2
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DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975)
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Underdown, Edward
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AIRPLANE! (1980)
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EACH DAWN I DIE (1939)
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Stevens, Stella
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Cecil Kellaway
Next: actress who appeared in many westerns
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CLAUDIA AND DAVID (1946)
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ROCKY MOUNTAIN (1950)
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MY OWN TRUE LOVE (1949)
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I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)
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DODES'KA-DEN (1970)
Next: lots of townsfolk form a posse
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GRAND CENTRAL MURDER (1942)...PRESENTING LILY MARS (1943)...ACT OF VIOLENCE (1948)
Next: Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman
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Barbara Pepper
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2
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Quigley, Juanita
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*A to Z of actresses and actors*:)
in Games and Trivia
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Zmed, Adrian